Moblogging blogcamp.in science blogs

Ashwan’s session on science blogs – talks about panda’s thumb started by pharyngula (my favorite science blog). Science is generally demonized so blogs are essential for humanizing science. We hear a lot of -ve stuff about scientists, stone idols driniking milk etc.  Also scientists are locked away behind their own community of science papers, academia etc. Science blogs help connect science with people. I am a biologist but I don’t understand climatology. So I goto realclimate.org which is run by climatologists. I use this and learn a lot about this subject. Overall Science blogging is important for scientists as well to connect with other scientists and the general public to get the word out about their work. People doing general amateur ornithology etc. should start blogging because getting to published papers is expensive but blogging is cheap. Scienceblogs.com aggregates science blogs from around the world. Best know from India who is also now on this site is Selva the scientific indian (voted as unsung blogger of the week on this site a while ago). They do a carnival called Melt which is a carnival of science blogs. (My post on OTEC was featured on one of these melts) Where has science blogging made a diff in the world – panda’s thumb has done a lot work on the creationism vs. Evolution controversy. They blogged about the court case live and helped advance awareness. Of course, the other side creationists started blogging too. Plos is people’s library of science where anyone can publish under open access. Plosone.org is a new initiative. Need to look it up.